Metropolis Then and Now

One of the most influential Science Fiction films of all time, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) is seen as a historical landmark in its construction of a futuristic fantasy that mirrors both our fears and our fascinations with technology.

How deeply Metropolis has made an imprint on film history is evident in the superficial veneer of visual mimicry in subsequent films. Metropolis is one of few historical films in which production design, set design, art direction, and costume design, to this day continue to be extensively visited and re-visited by music videos, animation, video games and, of course, science fiction films. Its influence can be seen in Dark City, The Matrix and most notably Blade Runner – it can even be found in Madonna’s 1984 video for “Express Yourself.”

But beyond its visual legacy, have we learned anything from Metropolis?

Considered the largest production of the silent era, Lang aspired for Metropolis to be of epic proportions. The film was produced by the UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft, in Berlin), which was funded in almost limitless sums by the German government at that time. As perhaps no other film company in relation to its national film culture, the UFA's changing fortunes were a barometer of the economic, political, aesthetic, and ideological struggles in film that made up Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

Lang, a self-proclaimed “visual person” had a background in architecture and was a pioneer in the exportation of German expressionistic film to America. Upon a visit to New York, Lang became deeply inspired by the city’s display of infinite buildings and skyscrapers. This inspiration led him and his wife, Thea Von Harbou, to write the sci-fi epic, Metropolis. 

The film takes place in 2026, one hundred years from when the movie was made. The world is a cold, mechanical, industrial one. The city of Metropolis is crowded and people are either of the privileged elite, or of the enslaved, poor masses.  The masses, a dreary group of workers who lead depressing and sad lives, inhabit the underground world in order to run the machines that keep the above ground of Metropolis in working order.

Lang portrays this gloomy environment by opening the film with a montage of zombie-like herds of people lining up to enter an elevator in a huge synchronized mass. The elevator lowers them into the abyssal and smoky underground. Lang augments the visual intensity with a montage of grinding machinery, and the ticking of a clock. 

This portrayal of man’s condition, the slaving underground masses, had not yet been portrayed in films of that time. Likewise, this lack of representation, or erasure of the working process also seems very relevant to our present day situation in film.

As sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek puts it:

Back in Metropolis, soon after we glimpse the underworld, Lang takes us out of the work caves and into a more lavish terrain of the above-world, where we are introduced to Freder (the main protagonist and the son of Joh Fredersen, the master of Metropolis). Freder is seen skipping like a happy child through the manicured garden and then flirting with a girl. Soon he comes to a stop when he sees the beautiful Maria, who is dismissed by his friend as the daughter of “some worker”. Freder is enchanted by Maria and proceeds to secretly follow her. He follows her to the underground, to a sort of ‘church’ meeting and witnesses the saintly and virginal Maria (Virgin Mary) give an uplifting sermon to the workers. It is here; at a later church meeting, that Maria prophesies Freder, the son of the master of Metropolis, is to become a mediator for the two cities.

As Freder then continues his exploration of the underground city, he sees all the men are working together in an almost meditative state in front of a giant machine.  In fact, the workers move so precisely that they seem part of the rotation.  An old worker struggling with the dials on a piece of clock-like machinery cannot keep up with the machine, and thus the machine overheats and explodes.  Freder begins to hallucinate that the masses of workers are being shoved into the mouth of the monstrous machine. The imagery of Metropolis’ unquenchable hunger for more human lives is symbolically clear, suggesting that the machines we have made to work for us are now working us.  And we are being consumed by our own creations.

Freder then rushes to tell his father Joh Fredersen, the master of Metropolis, about the horrors of the underground. Here we see the above ground city of Metropolis in sharp contrast to the underground. Even though it is clear in the film that the depiction of the underground alludes to a concentration camp reference, and that Joh’s persona hints at a Hitler-like character, it is also interesting to note that Metropolis was actually made pre-Hitler and WWII, and this frighteningly, foreshadows things to come in the real world.  

Joh is in cahoots with the mad scientist, Rotwang, in order to create a human machine modeled after the image of Maria. But why is this technological double created in the first place and, more importantly, why is she embodied as female? 

When Rotwang first reveals his robot to Fredersen he describes it as "a machine in the image of man that never tires or makes a mistake." He presents it to Fredersen as a prototype of "the workers of the future." "Now," he says, "we have no further use for living workers." As a new mechanical worker, the robot is the ultimate obedient slave that does not rebel, does not protest, does not eat or sleep or require wages. But there is another reason for the robot's construction, the robot is intended to reincarnate Rotwang's ideal woman, Hel, his lost love who was stolen by Joh Fredersen. She died while giving birth to Freder. The construction of the robot woman, then, also represents the ultimate male fantasy of technological creation, birth without the mother. Though Rotwang's intentions for his creation are somewhat obscure, we know what Fredersen has in mind: he recognizes the robot as a tool and potential counterforce to Maria, a means to destroy her influence and power over the workers. They believe Maria is leading a revolt of the workers in her sermons. By modeling the robot after Maria’s likeness, he hopes to trick the workers into submission.

Rotwang captures Maria and takes her to the laboratory. In the scene that follows, Fritz Lang utilizes a visual cacophony of special effects developed by visual effects supervisor, Eugen Schüfftan. In the robot transformation scene, Maria is hooked up to a myriad of machines and contraptions and is one of the most memorable special effects sequences in film history. Glowing rings and lightning effects flash as the robot’s face dissolves into Maria’s face. Rudimentary by today’s standards, Schüfftan’s work combined live scenes with models and mirrors. These effects became known as the Schüfftan process in his honor and were considered cutting edge at that time.

The robot-Maria is far from virginal. She is a robot-vamp. This construct sets up the idea of technology as a femme fatale. Introducing the fear of the vigorous, sexualized woman and the fear that technology is linked to the robot-vamp who poses a threat to all men, and ironically, as we shall see, to technology itself. But the question arises; is robot-Maria an omen of chaos that seduces the elite by her sexual allure and turns the men into a violent machine-destroying mass? 

Although the robot-Maria is a product of male industrial technology and male sexual desires, her actions indicate that she is also much more as she challenges her male indoctrination and transforms from robot obedience to lively cyborg hostility. Acting independently, she surpasses the boundaries that separate masters and slaves, capitalists and workers–boundaries on which patriarchal rule in Metropolis depend. Seen this way, she is considerably more than an omen of chaos; she becomes a figure for the possibility of radical social change.

Robot-Maria eventually rallies the workers into a revolt. She convinces them to destroy the machines in order to free themselves from the Master.

In the final tableau, we see the workers' foreman and Joh Fredersen shake hands, providing the reconciliation between the "hands" and the "brain," now mediated by Freder's intercession as the "heart."

Watching the film is like peeling an onion. As we peel the layers away and the story unfolds, we find not a prize, but more and more layers hidden beneath the surface. Lang brilliantly deconstructs this relationship with technology is in a multitude of ways and in the process many new questions arise. He sets up a complex intricately woven system of layers that indirectly questions not only technology itself, but he uses the “model of technology” to address social issues, including conflicts and contradictions–between labor and capital, feminist liberation and patriarchy, as well as anarchy and authority.  But what does analyzing Metropolis at the present bring us?

Lang’s Metropolis - a world separated by class, capitalism and technology - is still prevalent today. However in the “metropolis” of cinema, the explosion of digital filmmaking has put the master’s tools in the hands of the masses. Also with the advent of YouTube, MySpace and Google, it is clear in today’s cinema that there is a reversal of the old Hollywood model for the privileged and a new chance for the workers in the dark caves (the Independent Filmmaker) to climb up into the above-world. But to what cause?

More could be said about Metropolis and its impact on cinema and sci-fi. Even more especially could be said about technology in relation to the state of independent filmmaking today. But we’ll finish with this from Francis Ford Coppola in the documentary Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress:

 Lisa Ward is a video artist living, working and teaching video in Atlanta, Georgia. Eric Bomba-Ire is the founder of CinemATL.